Backstage News on Why Dolph Ziggler Has Heat

By the looks of things, WWE Superstar Dolph Ziggler has backstage heat.

He's not been booked terribly well recently. Granted, the creative team have never booked him competently—just look at how many times he lost to Sheamus in 2012—but these last couple of months have been awful, even by his standards.

He nonsensically lost cleanly to Antonio Cesaro on Superstars last week. On WWE Raw, he's been presented as a cowardly babyface too afraid of losing his job to do what's right and stand up to the corporation.

To make matters significantly worse, on Friday's SmackDown during Miz TV, Triple H verbally tore him apart by mocking his size and questioning whether he could truly make it in WWE.

In this week's (subscriber-only) F4W Newsletter, Bryan Alvarez gives an update and writes that Ziggler is likely being punished for something he said in an interview last month.

The feeling is it stems from an interview he did around the time of SummerSlam. The problem is he did tons of interviews around SummerSlam, some big and some small, and in all of them I've checked I haven't seen anything that one would deem particularly offensive. The problem is also that with WWE and the decision-makers at the top, sometimes the things that set them off are things that a normal human being wouldn't even think twice about. But it is believed he is paying the price for something he said.

Assuming this is true, it does look very unfair on WWE's part. Sure, the 33-year-old can be frank in interviews, but he's never outright said anything shocking.

The situation is even more mind-boggling when you think of the things people like Randy Orton and CM Punk have gotten away with saying.

Orton infamously humiliated Diva Kelly Kelly when he made remarks about her personal life on a radio show in 2011. Easily the worst interview he's ever done, this was out of line and totally unprofessional.

CM Punk, meanwhile, has been known for tweeting about competing TV shows—while Raw is actually airing.

Not to mention his childish outburst towards a ringside fan two weeks ago. (Apparently, if you go to a wrestling show and boo a performer, it justifies getting bombarded with vicious personal insults.)

Neither were punished for their transgressions—at least not in any noticeable way.

If WWE insist on being so petty when they dish out strict punishments to talent, they could at least be somewhat consistent.